AVFC statement - McLeish sacked.

[Irish villain]

Worse than O'Leary. At least O'Leary, even in that dreadful final season, delivered us a 3-1 win over Blues when we were both fighting for survival.

There's no urgency about this McLeish side. We are in a relegation scrap yet we don't look like scoring unless the opposition make a mistake or somebody in our side produces a moment of individual brilliance.

Desperate times.

[Steve67]

Desperate times and yet, still Randy/Faulkner won't act.  Pathetic.

[danlanza]

I,Danlanza,herebye agree to abide by Legions Site Standards,but for fuck's sake,do we have to put up with this fu..in shite for the rest of the season and possibly next aswell?F..kin shite football,shite manager with no f..kin clue at all.Complete fu..in dross to watch with no positive outcome.Sick of watching this bollox every week.The best thing to do is sack this idiot and as someone said yesterday,put Sid in charge.At least he would have some clue,alongside the youth team and reserve team coach,and also some passion and fight!We are putting out a youth side week in week out so put the right people in charge.Watching this shite every week is not good for anybody's health or anybody's fu..in pocket either!!Our club is dying on its feet and it's a bastard travesty.We can't score goals...Big f..kin problem,our midfield can't pass the ball to one of there own Big f..kin problem and last but not fuc.in least,we can't fu..in defend for shite!!!!!What a cocksuckingpisspoorbollox show we are putting on this season.Ripping off season ticket holders and pay on the day fans every bloody week.Piss poor show Villa,piss poor!Get this club back to where it belongs...European bloody football!Jaigermeister please barman,make that two!!!!!!

[richardb]

"The future of Alex McLeish"...

...I hope will only be discussed in the off topic threads from now on.

We need to have some self respect. Get rid. KMac is more than used to putting out a motivated team full of kids, to get a result.

[PhilGibson]

How bad does it have to get on the playing front for Randy to make a change? Championship football being acceptable.
Is he really that dis-interested in us that he has stopped watching? He has not been to many games this season, you could say because of personal circumstances.
Is McLeish untouchable in his eyes because he is balancing the books? Are the finances that bad that the on the pitch performance does not matter.

I believe that Randy has felt really badly burnt by the last two managerial appointments and now he just wants a yes man who is not going to rock the boat (McLeish fits the bill), and does not want to from a financial or a personal viewpoint go through the process of recruiting a manager again in the near future. I think he wants to see the academy graduates be the bedrock of the side (cheaper in wages and transfer fees), he probably feels that the McLeish being the ultimate yes man, will go into the summer asking for as little money as necessary and will continue to drive down wages.

The long and short of it, whatever the outcome of this season I just do not see McLeish moving on no matter how much we all protest. The sole custodian as he calls himself, is calling the shots and he is making the decisions from 3000 miles away with a focus on something other than Villa. Ellis would have sacked McLeish by now because he was firstly always looking to protect his own back and second turned up to every game and saw the consequences of a bad manager on the pitch.

Randy is an absentee owner and does not now have the appetite for Villa, so we will continue to drift with McLeish until he decides to show more interest or sells up.

Very sad state of affairs.

[Monty]

I still get pissed off how he mentions the word 'experienced' as if it's a word meaning 'inherently better'. Quite apart from how false that belief is, what message does that send to these young players, trying their bollocks off in a shite system, that they're inherently better than the players who, in the same system, produced such objectively bad football?

[adrenachrome]

Its depressing but, I can see him being here for a few years regardless of whether we're relegated or not.

He's worse than Billy McNeil and I think, without a hint of hyperbole, the worst manager to have ever taken charge of our club.

I wholeheartedly agree, and my first visit to VP was in the year of 1966 AD.

He is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. "vampire squid from Hell".

[Dave Summers]

Firstly, I will state that I would prefer it if McLeish was moved on.   However yesterday, I am going to cut him a little slack as I think he was hamstrung by the injuries to Collins and Gabby which necessitated to substitutions that he probably didn't want to make at the time.    I would like to think that if we had not had the injuries then the likes of Gardner and Carruthers would have been brought on to try and change the game.

Of course, I may be completely wrong in this assumption and he would never have thought of bringing them on.  However, he spent all week talking up Carruthers and I was really looking forward to seeing him yesterday.   We will see on Tuesday I guess, I think it's a game we MUST win and therefore I think we need a little flair on there and flair with workrate and not our number 10 who really doesn't give a f*ck either way.

[Gregorys Boy]

First of all WOW! 263 Pages for McLeish?!

It would be interesting to see what he would do with another season under his belt and if he was given a bit more money to spend. 

My concern is that if we do not learn from the mistakes of this season then we could be even worse trouble next time around.  I think championship is looking a real possibility unless there is a change either in the managers chair or in the sqaud and the managers thinking.

[Richard]

First of all WOW! 263 Pages for McLeish?!

It would be interesting to see what he would do with another season under his belt and if he was given a bit more money to spend. 

My concern is that if we do not learn from the mistakes of this season then we could be even worse trouble next time around.  I think championship is looking a real possibility unless there is a change either in the managers chair or in the sqaud and the managers thinking.

Not at all interesting, just plain stupid sorry !

[Gregorys Boy]

You maybe right, I think it would be too big a gamble also, but my point is that the only excuse he can make for this season is that it is not his squad and that the injuries have really hit us big, but yeah I have seen enough myself.

[PaulWinch again]

I notice the in the press conference today Mcleish said -

'"Our recent lack of winning obviously shows where we are. Form-wise, the amount of injuries and the young kids that have come in, we have performed well, if not the top quality that we would expect at Aston Villa."

Unfortunately Alex it's not really a 'recent' thing, we've hardly won any games all season. It's not really form when it goes on for so long.

[not3bad]

we don't look like scoring unless the opposition make a mistake

It struck me on Saturday that this was exactly how Blues beat both us & Arsenal in the League Cup last season.  Another reason to believe we are turning into them.

[Vanilla]

we don't look like scoring unless the opposition make a mistake

It struck me on Saturday that this was exactly how Blues beat both us & Arsenal in the League Cup last season.  Another reason to believe we are turning into them.

Which kind of confirms that the manager has no other strategy when it comes to his management style. If all he does is transform any team he manages into a footballing version of a turtle, we can't really expect anything else anytime soon.

[brian green]

Listening to O'Neill on R5L last Saturday using an "interview" with the unspeakable Pat Murphy to polish up his halo and claim the reflected glory of Ashley Young, James Milner and Steward Downing as though they were the only player transactions he ever instigated and no mention of Habib Beye, Curtis Davies, Steve Sidwell, Luke Young, Gary Cahill, Craig Gardner and all the other monumental bollocks he dropped - made me start to consider what Alex McLeish will say at the end of this season regardless of which league we are in.

Will he be man enough and honourable enough to tell the truth that it has been a truly awful season?   Will he hold up his hand and say that he has been too negative, too cautious  and that the result has been mind bendingly unwatchable football and attendances dropping like a stone?   Will he admit that most of the pain for the fans has been generated by him?

Or will anything he says be directed at the owner and the media?    Difficult picking up the threads of two recently departed previous managers.   Understandable resentment by the fans to a manager from a local rival.   The need to run a tight ship.   The need to be patient.   The need to set achievable ambitions.   Bad luck.   Horrendous injury list.  Stan's illness.   Young Lions having to go to the Theatre of Dreams.  Inconsistent referees.

Yes of course it will be the latter.

The blindingly self evident principal reason for our plight will be buried, with the help of the likes of Pat Murphy and the armies of media arse lickers, in a distant grave with the simple lie of which Josef Goebbels would have been proud "The Villa fans were on his back from day one" Daily Mirror 13th April 2012.